The most wonderful time of the year

I love stuff - just about any kind of stuff really, and the stranger and the cheaper it is the better. That's why I love the summer because I have endless opportunities to find all sorts of treasures at garage sales.

Check out the finds I reeled in with just one morning's worth of work.

First off I found a ton of fabulous vintage children's books. I love the illustrations and I'm hoping at some point to repurpose them into other fabulous things.
Believe it or not, I got this entire set below for only $2. I saw it from across some gal's yard and nearly knocked over several shoppers just to get it before anyone else could snatch it up. It's one of the most fabulously ugly things I've ever seen.

I've determined that this is my new thing, "fabulously ugly" because anyone can have something aesthetically pleasing in their house, but where's the fun in that? You want some cute, sleek, ultra modern knick knack? Go to Ikea and buy something you can't pronounce. Maybe something with a vowel with those two little dots on top of it.

Me, I prefer this hideous ceramic coffee set made to look like stacked green apples and daisies. It's what you call a "conversation piece".

And speaking of conversation pieces, this was my best find yet: a holographic pictue of Jesus knocking on someone's front door.

I can't believe he only cost me a buck, and my husband can't believe that I actually hung him up in the hallway;

Me: "Look dear, every time you walk by him it looks like he's actually knocking!!"

My husband: *eye roll*

Almost every day I think of new things he might say to whoever opens that door and I imagine that will entertain me for years to come, and perhaps be added to the list of reasons why I'll never know what heaven looks like. I'm betting that old J.C. has a pretty good sense of humor though so I'm willing to risk it.

I can't wait until next Saturday!

Thought Provoking Thursday – Hobby Lobby

For this installment of Thought Provoking Thursday I’m going to give you a play by play of some of the random thoughts that knocked around in my brain the last time I went to Hobby Lobby – the land of vintage pricing guns and understocked shelves.

Upon entering the store and seeing an employee stocking shelves with fake plastic pumpkins and fall leaf garlands:
“Whoa, hold on. It’s June right? Have I just entered some sort of time warp or maybe this is an alternate universe? If so am I skinny in this alternate reality?” looks down at body, “Damn, guess not.”

While trying to navigate the main aisle which is crammed full of square display pedestals overloaded with breakable merchandise that is teetering on the edges.
“Dear God, don’t let my children knock over any of those awful ceramic pitchers in the shape of farm animals because then I’d have to run out of this store and never come back. I’d rather boycott this place than to have to pay even a dime towards a rabid looking pig that you can pour lemonade out of – especially if it’s broken.”

After being lured into a clearance aisle in the hopes of unbelievable bargains:
“Why is this end table missing the drawer knob? Look at that huge scratch on the side. I bet if I picked it up that entire leg would fall off. Good lord they’re still asking $40 for this thing. Do people buy this cheap foreign crap at full price?”

After locating the item I came to purchase and finding they only have one of them in stock and I need 3:
“@#$%#$^#$%@@&^*$^&!!! Why do they only carry one of everything? $$%@$^##&%@$%@$%!”

While standing for 30 minutes at the only open checkout lane watching the poor employee search for price stickers, manually input each price and then scour the printed ad in front of her to see if it’s on sale:
“This is why this store is closed on Sunday. The employees need time to go to church and pray that the owners will at some point enter the 21st century.”

Now don’t get me wrong. I adore Hobby Lobby. Okay, well maybe “adore” is an exaggeration. I shop there because they’re the best location for certain craft supplies in my area (that is, if you only need one of each item). They usually have really good sales too…but that’s where my adoration ends and my frustration begins.

Tell me your thoughts about Hobby Lobby, or about your favorite or least favorite craft store.

Super Hero Photo Backdrop

My best friend's little boy had a birthday last month. He's into all things super hero and so naturally his paty was super hero themed. The invitations encouraged all of the guests to arrive in costume and we also supplied some generic masks and capes too and we wanted to have some back drops available for the kids to take pictures in front of with their costumes.

I thought I'd share with you the quick and east photo backdrop idea we came up with in case you're planning a super hero party of your own, or if you like masks and spandex yourself - heyI don't judge!

We started off with a king size blue sheet we got from our local thrift store for $2. Just lay it on a flat surface (the driveway works well) grab some black spray paint and free hand a city skyline. Then fill in the buildings with the black spray paint.

Get a sponge and cut it into rectangle shapes, dip it in white acrylic craft paint and dab on the windows. We used these sponges to outline the cloud shapes as well. (I actually didn't have a sponge - this is some leftover craft foam from a project, but it worked just as well)


And in no time at all you've got a city skyline for your little superheroes to pose in front of.
Here's my little guy testing it out before the party.

We had a white sheet too and a plethora of cheap spray paint so we free handed a starburst/tie dyed effect.

We had to explain what a Charlie's Angels pose was to my son - kid's these days! You'd think I would have taught him better.

Both backdrops were a great success at the party.

Holy Crapola!

UPDATE: the winners have been chosen! Drumroll please............

Congratulations Jaclyn (anyone who would want 107 oreos is a friend of mine!) and BettyCrockerAss! (because I've got a lot of days I'd like to do over too)

I'll be contacting you to find out where to ship your pincushions to.

Thanks to everyone who commented. I loved them all but unfortunately I could only pick 2.

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A friend of mine pointed out the other day that I currently have 107 followers on this blog.

I’ve been flirting with the 100 mark for quite some time but to finally achieve it, and actually surpass it – well it feels like an accomplishment, even though all I do is randomly post some drivel about bears crapping in the woods.

107! Thanks everyone. It honestly means a lot to me that 107 of you find this place useful enough and entertaining enough to add it to what I’m sure is a long list of other internet stops in your busy lives. I mean Farmville isn’t going to play itself, am I right?

So to sufficiently express my gratitude I’m giving away two of these lovely funky pincushions.






All you have to do to win is tell me in the comments what you’d like to have 107 of. Consider this your thought provoking Thursday! (hey, I know it's Friday but Blogger was unavailable yesterday when I tried to post so cut me some slack)

Everybody wants 107 of something, right?

107 life sized Smurf figurines – sign me up!

107 vacation days from work - oh yeah!

107 freckles – what? I’ve got a lot more than that right now, 107 would be a reduction!

You get the idea. Now to be fair I should probably just choose a winner at random but I’ve never really been accused of being fair. So I’m just going to pick the two that make me smile the biggest and they will be the winners.

Be sure to leave some way for me to get in contact with you.

Martha left out a few steps

So I stumbled across this cute crepe paper carrot idea on Martha Stewart.com and I thought it would be fun to make them for my daughter's preschool class as an Easter treat.

Crepe Paper Carrots How-To - Martha Stewart.com

1. Loosely wrap orange streamer to form carrot shape, making it thicker at top. Tuck in gifts as you work. Press end of paper down into top.

2. Fold green crepe paper in half across its grain. Download leaf template, and trace onto folded paper. Cut out; bunch up. Tuck leaves into carrot top; secure with dab of hot glue.

Look how easy and effortless it sounds right? Well as I got started I realized that Martha left out a few steps. So for the sake of all crafters I've decided to rewrite them so they're more accurate.

1. Scour every store in the city for orange crepe paper. Because most places only carry a select few colors and orange is not one of them.

2. Assemble your items to go inside of the carrots. I chose sidewalk chalk, mini bubbles and smarties candy.


3. Start wrapping. Okay, this seems like an easy thing right? Wrong. Just think back to high school when you were on the prom decorating committee. What's that? You weren't on the prom decorating committee? Okay, well then think back to high school when you TP'd that skank Sandy Collin's house because she was trying to steal your boyfriend (rotten eggs and flaming bags of dog poo are uneccessary). Anyway, my point is that when you start wrapping the crepe paper around things, it gets all kinked up because it's still attached to the roll right, and then you've got this huge mess of kinky crepe paper, which is not nearly as fun as it sounds.

Sure you could just cut off a length of it and start wrapping but then you never know if you're going to have enough and then it's still long so it starts getting all kinked up too and it's trailing on the floor and you're whipping it around and the cat thinks it's one hell of an awesome game and she inadvertently claws the crap out of your foot while chasing after it and you have to quickly explain to your 7 year old how Sh$%Fu@# is a small island in the carribean, and that he should never mention it's name to anyone because all the islanders hate America, and well it's just a social taboo.

4. So now that you've gotten the hang of it you start wrapping the actual items that will go into the carrot. You spend half an hour trying to figure out the best way to wrap them and then determine that there's no way you're going to get those Smarties in there so you just start eating them until your hands start shaking from the sugar rush. But that's okay because it distracts from the massive blood loss from your foot.


5. At some point you're going to wish that you were more adventurous in high school/college and wrapped your own, um "cigarettes" because that skill would come in handy for this project. If all else fails though you can go on Facebook and ask your cousin for some tips (we've all got one of those cousins don't we?).

Anyone got a light? I've got candy if we get the munchies later.

6. Now it's time to add on the green top. Fire up the glue gun and try to accomplish the task without burning the crap out of the tips of your fingers and having to explain to your 4 year old how "sonofab%^ch" is the Scandinavian word for "sweat socks".

7. Stand back and admire your work.

Thought Provoking Thursday

Do you ever wonder what it takes to be a yarn spokesperson? I mean besides the ability to wear a formal evening gown and touch TV screens to make letters appear on them?

According to my web research (which consisted of visiting the Lion Brand web site) Vanna is "America's favorite crocheter". Really? I don't recall voting on that. How exactly was that title determined?

Her Wikipedia page states that she's an "avid crocheter". Well I suppose that's something, but I'm an avid reader, and nobody's offered to name a library after me. I'm not a low level celebrity though, so maybe that's the distinction.

Why not shoot for a more well known celebrity spokesperson. Surely other famous people like to crochet or perhaps knit. And really the rules here seem pretty lax. How about someone who just occassionally wears something knitted? Works for me.

Whose yarn would you buy?

Thought Provoking Thursdays

One of my new year’s resolutions this year was to blog more often. Okay, okay it hasn’t been so successful. How are your resolutions going? Let’s talk about that bag of mini Snickers you’ve got stashed in your glove box before you judge me alright?

Sorry, I get overly defensive when faced with completely imaginary criticism.

Anyway, I haven’t given up. I’m throwing myself into this goal with wild abandon. Okay, more like mediocre interest. I’ve been searching the web for inspiration and I’ve noticed a lot of blogs do what is called “Wordless Wednesday”. Basically they just throw a random picture up and boom, blog entry complete.

My first reaction was, “pfft, those lazy cheeky monkeys” (yes that’s really the phrase that formed in my head – I’m a joy at dinner parties). But then, I realized the genius of it all. It’s a guaranteed weekly blog entry and you don’t even have to type anything! If I photographically catalogued my extensive collection of plastic windup toys I’d have blog fodder for a year! (these ones below are the pride and joy of my collection. You're riveted, aren't you?)

But you guys deserve more, right? Of course you do. You come here for . . . umm, what do you come here for? Oh yeah, craft tutorials, insights and all around entertainment. I can’t just throw some random pictures up and call it good. Besides, I started writing this post on a Thursday and I’m a huge fan of alliteration so I had to come up with something else, and I did:

Thought Provoking Thursdays!

What’s that, you ask? It’s an opportunity for me to provide you with little nuggets of wisdom, moral dilemmas, mind blowing questions or statements that will really get your mind working. You know like; “If a bear craps in the woods . . . “ no, that’s not right. “If a tree falls in the forest and hits a bear who's taking a crap does it make a sound. . .” no, no “If a tree falls in the forest, is it cut up, made into pulp and then turned into Charmin toilet paper, that a bear then uses when he craps in the woods?”

Well, next week will be better. I promise. I’ll try to make them craft related too, such as; “If a bear were to make a toilet paper cozy would he knit it or crochet it?”

On second thought, maybe I should have just waited until next Wednesday.